The present invention relates generally to exporting data and more specifically to facilitating the providing business partner specific data in the execution of a media campaign.
Data management applications act as a central repository to manage vast amounts of data using centralized interfaces. This data is useful not only within the application but can be used externally as well. In one example of a data management application, such as a customer resource management (CRM) application, a user may be able to generate and execute a media campaign. The media campaign may be a combination of various functions relating to contacting customers or prospective customers for any number of a variety of reasons. For example, the campaign may include contacting prospective customers in a chance to offer for sale a particular product or service. In another example, the contact may be to existing customers to send an information letter or other type of contact.
In the execution of this campaign, the system may perform various functions, such as combining a list of customers and customer data with one or more forms of output, referred to a communication channel. In an example of an email campaign, a list of email addresses may be used to provide a mailing list for a mass mailing. The system may have email addresses in a particular file or storage location. This file may be accessed and the addresses used to direct the transmission of the message. The communication channel would be email and the content of the campaign would be the predefined email content possibly personalized with customer data.
The system may have other benefits, such as using other types of data with the transmissions. For example, the contact data may be not only the email address, but also the contact's name, which can be included in an introduction section. In these systems, automated campaigns can be set up to use this data. Although, the usage of the data is not monitored. For example, if the contact data is incorrect, the system has no way of knowing this, but rather sends an email that is never received. Other similar systems and techniques may be used for types of contact, including sending a physical mailing using a postal delivery, sending a facsimile, a page, a short messaging system (SMS) message or other techniques.
In existing campaign execution applications, a user sets up a campaign by selecting various amounts of data to define the campaign. The user also selects the communication channel selection which indicates the corresponding communication channel for the campaign. In these systems, the channel includes different available communication techniques, such as fax, email, SMS, telephone, postal delivery and other available means. These systems also include an open field which is a generic designation where a communication channel is not defined.
It is becoming common for users to have a second party to perform various steps of the campaign instead of whereas previously all steps of the media campaign were performed internally. In the existing systems, the campaign may be executed by one or more parties performing different steps and the underlying data for the campaign must made available. Therefore, the second parties need business partner data, which is the data relating to the contacts. This data is stored within the data management application and the current campaign execution applications do not have specific functionalities for extracting and sharing this data.
One available technique in the current systems is the utilization of the open channel. In this approach, the user may enter information into a predefined form and select the communication channel as the open channel. Due to system requirements associated with the selection of the open channel, this data is not in a readily usable format. Furthermore, the data is assembled as various communication elements that have not been assigned a particular means for being outputted. Using the open channel designated for transmitting data is problematic because exporting data is beyond the purpose of this feature. Therefore, the open channel designation may be used to create a data specific file, this file is not readily transmittable and cannot be easily used by any external application.